Fed official: Fixing the job market could take years

Janet Yellen, the vice chairwoman of the Federal Reserve Board, thinks both Congress and the Fed need to do more to lift the economy.

Healing the job market should take "center stage" on the Federal Reserve's agenda, but that task could still take years, a high-ranking member of the central bank said Monday.

Janet Yellen, who as vice chairwoman of the Federal Reserve Board is number two in command to Ben Bernanke, believes that the central bank should continue to focus its policies on boosting the economy and the job market in particular.

"It will be a long road back to a healthy job market," she said. "It will be years before many workers feel like they have regained the ground lost since 2007."

Yellen is known as an inflation dove, concerned more about the weak job market than the possibility of prices rising rapidly any time soon. Those on the opposite side of the spectrum, known as inflation hawks, criticize the Fed's policies for weakening the dollar and potentially fueling asset bubbles, for example in bonds or farmland.